Flight Question Land MFD Help

[Space Dragon]

Hi all
I'm having a proplem with land mfd whilst trying to land on mars, I'm using the XR2 but all it does is send me into spiraling loops in orbit until I either run out of fuel or it nose dives me into the surface at 1000+ m/s. (I did try it with the XR1 also but with the same result) its driving me mad now have had about 20 tries at this and have tried it manually but that martian atmosphere it a slippery beast, would be a shame to have got all the way to mars and not be able to land.

I did try lola but it just sits there waiting for ignition and does not seem to go any further. (yes hover doors are open in all cases)

any help or sugestions would be appreciated

Thanks all

PS am running out of XR2's and pilots

 

[Nemoricus]

I've found that Land and Lola are pretty sensitive to initial conditions. If your path doesn't pass directly over the target base or close to it, they don't work. If you start them too late, they crash you. Make sure to activate them while you're a long way away from the base, like a megameter away.

I hope this helps.

 

[dougkeenan]

Also lower your speed at the destination - don't try a super elliptical orbit zipping past it at periapsis. Practice on bodies without an atmosphere and you'll get a feel for when you can and when you can't use it. (Best to skip LandMFD for LOLA entirely, it doesn't CTD and when it's going wrong you can abort and save your ship!)

 

[Nighthawke]

As previously suggested, scrap LandMFD for LOLA. LandMFD has a bug which can cause it to CTD on SOI change. Also, if I recall correctly, neither LandMFD or LOLA play to well on bodies with atmospheres, although I have managed to get LOLA to function on Mars after a fashion. It doesn't work every time, and all I can tell you is that you must be low (under 20k) and your trajectory must pass directly over or very close (under 1k) to Olympus. Start the LOLA autopilot at a pretty fair distance (1.5m) from Olympus, otherwise LOLA will not be able to slow you down fast enough or control your descent. Mars has just enough atmosphere to light you up real good, but not quite enough to slow your airspeed appreciably or keep you in level flight. It can be a real headache when trying to land and isn't worth squat for aerobraking. I prefer to land on Earth any day of the week!!

 

[Andy44]

Land MFD used to work better on Orbiter 2005. Something seems to have chenge when O-06 came out, and Land now has bugs. With some vehicles it has less control authority and so you have to help it along with small joystick inputs. And then there is the CTD problem. LOLA is also imperfect, as it was never completely finished, it's basically a beta.

Unfortunately, Land and LOLA's creator passed on and didn't leave the source code behind so what you've got is it until someone writes a new one.

 

[tylor2000]

searches for decompiler.....reverse engineerer.....

 

[the.punk]

When I want an automated landing I use LOLA because land mfd has bugs. As the others said you must activate it not late.

But doing a manual landing is more challenging.